Doctors have been urged to use their powers of influence and advocacy in the fight to tackle climate change.
At a meeting on climate change and health to mark World Health Day speakers compared the fight against climate change with other public health campaigns on alcohol, obesity, and especially smoking.
Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said, “In 1962 we called for a ban on smoking in public places—it took 45 years to achieve that. I have a feeling we haven’t got 45 years to spare for tackling climate change.”
Mike Gill, co-chair of the Climate and Health Council, which organised the meeting, said that GPs and hospital doctors have the power in numbers and in influence to raise awareness of climate change among patients.
He said, “Doctors used to smoke in front of their patients. Doctors still drive to work—often in very large cars.” Now they have to bring action on climate change into a clinical setting.
Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, called for a Stern-style report—referring to the report by Nicholas Stern on the economic effects of climate change—to show the health benefits and cost of reducing carbon emissions.
“This can help to make climate change a public health issue. It’s part of doctors’ role. Doctors not only stopped smoking themselves, they encouraged others to stop smoking,” she said.
But Naaz Coker, chairwoman of St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust, said that doctors were lagging behind on the matter of climate change. She told the conference that the non-clinical staff at her trust had taken important steps to reduce waste and carbon emissions, including composting 70% of its green waste and increasing its recycling.
“The next phase of our campaign is to get the clinical community involved in both reducing their own carbon footprint and encouraging hospitals to do so,” she added.
The meeting also heard how Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust is set to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by the beginning of next year.
Delegates considered the problem of international conferences and urged webcasting and video conferencing where possible.
Patricia Hamilton, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, talked about the steps the college had taken to reduce its carbon footprint but said that an important part of the college’s work was training doctors in the developing world. “We try to make these courses as self sustaining locally as we can. If we eradicated flights altogether we would not be able to sustain these courses. This is a dilemma we face.”
Speaking by video link, Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization’s director general, said that WHO was putting together a research programme to better assess the scale and nature of health vulnerability to climate change.
“Although climate change is a global phenomenon, its consequences will not be evenly distributed,” she said. People in the developing world will be first and hardest hit.